


A Beginner's Guide to Homemaking

by Eijentu



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Justice Positive, M/M, all the usual Andermance things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6216004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eijentu/pseuds/Eijentu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders needs a gift to express his feelings for Hawke. Written for the 2015 Handers Secret Satinalia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beginner's Guide to Homemaking

**Author's Note:**

> Written for apostateboots for the 2015 Handers Secret Satinalia gift exchange.

i.

They didn’t celebrate Satinalia much, when he was a boy. His father didn’t believe in it - a dry, empty man from the dry, empty north - and his mother, meek and soft-spoken, never argued the point. It was, his father used to say - or Anders thinks he did - not the way righteous folk ought to celebrate Andraste’s sacrifice, with baubles and roast goose and children squealing over trinkets.

‘We praise the Maker through work,’ he’d said, more than once; Anders has a memory of the man putting on his winter coat as he said it, roughly pulling the collar free from where it had caught in on itself. 'What do you need presents for?’

Anders had thought, at the time, that he could think of quite a lot of things he could use presents for; but he’d known by then - couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t known - that cheeking his father wasn’t a good idea.

His mother was Fereldan, from a family of Ander stock originally, he thinks. He can remember the flat, broad accent of his maternal grandmother, so similar to his father’s that he was confused for several years; thought she was his father’s mother and couldn’t work out who fitted where. It was his grandfather, he thinks, that cleared it up in the end. Kind blue eyes and a very large nose and a face much older than it probably should have been, looking back.

He doesn’t know, though. There is no-one to ask, no-one left to tell.

The problem with memory, Anders thinks, is that it grows stronger when shared. He learnt that from Hawke: from watching Hawke snipe back and forth with Carver about who used to skive the most back in Lothering, hearing Hawke’s stories about his lovely dead sister, her smile and her magic and her stubborn streak a mile wide, seeing the quirk of Hawke’s lips as he plucked another anecdote from the air, ignored the groans and the gestures and the appearance of Varric’s quill to say, 'I remember the time…’

Hawke tells his stories, his memories, his history, and they bounce back to him, amplified, affirmed, made real by the people who share them. 

Anders doesn’t have anyone like that, not anymore. For Justice is… complicated and Karl is dead, taken with him all the things they did in secret: the kisses no-one could see and the affection no-one could witness and the words that they themselves could never ever say so that Anders wonders sometimes, even now, if it was ever real at all; it is only the memory of Hawke, a stranger then, but kind even so, standing at his side in the Chantry basement that grounds him, brings him back. Reminds him that he’s alive, that it happened. That it mattered.

That Anders mattered. Matters. It’s a strange feeling. Because Anders is pretty sure he’d stopped worrying much about that, long ago. And it wasn’t a conscious decision, more the result of too many years with too little kindness, too little care, too many other things, complicated things, getting in the way. But the way Hawke looks at him, all these years later - the way Hawke looks at him makes him feel like he might matter. That he matters to Hawke, at least.

And that’s enough, Anders thinks. That’s more than he ever expected, in truth.

 

ii.

Hawke’s first gift is an amulet that would see Anders hanged if ever he were caught with it. He hands it over quite casually, as though it were just another thing to be shared out amongst his gang of sorts; but his eyes give him away - too intent, too watchful - and when he sees Anders is pleased, his smile is downright boyish.

And Anders gulps a bit at that. Partly because there’s a bubbly sort of feeling spilling from his chest to his throat, but also, partly, because he’s not sure he ought to be having bubbly feelings. Not about Hawke. Not about anyone, really.

He likes it too much, that’s the problem. He likes having secret looks and bubbly feelings and he likes, more, the very strong sense that Hawke is having bubbly feelings as well. It’s been so long, he’d forgotten this side of himself; and now he’s found it, like a golden ring at the bottom of some forgotten chest, and he wants to polish it clean again and say, 'Look! Here it was all along! Isn’t it lovely?’

He’s spent so long telling himself - no, damn it, more than that, _believing_ \- that he cannot have something like this: a friend, a partner, companionship, intimacy. Trust. Love. He’s believed it for so long now that Hawke’s boyish smile and intent eyes and the amulet he knows for something more than a prize - he’s believed it for so long that these things, all these things, seem surreal, unbelievable. As though he’s stepped into someone else’s life; and perhaps that’s what makes him uneasy, because he has, in a sense, done just that. Anders has stepped into Hawke’s life and Hawke knows about his prickly little brother and his lovely dead sister, he knows about smart-mouthed dwarves and clever pirate captains and he knows about Templars and nobles and elves and city guards and all these things and yet. He does not know about Anders. And Justice. He cannot know. What that truly means.

Anders still does not know what that truly means. To expect the same of anyone else seems ludicrous and slightly offensive.

Hawke wants Anders the Darktown healer, Anders the fellow apostate, Anders the flirt. And… and these are all parts of Anders, but the fragments do not make the whole. He cannot expect anyone to love the whole. And he didn’t, until now.

 

iii.

But the thing of it is - the thing of it is that he can’t go back now. Everything has changed. It’s thrilling and terrifying all at once. He can’t keep pretending; can’t keep telling himself there’s no harm in what he’s doing: the lingering looks, the furtive sideways glances. All the times Anders’s knee has found Hawke’s under the table at Wicked Grace, neither man moving away but instead occasionally just _shifting_ , pressing closer together without ever uttering a word. On those nights, Anders walks home with his purse empty as ever, but it doesn’t matter a whit because he’s floating, joyous, soaring inside. The bubbly feeling swells in his chest, he wears a smile about his clinic; and these things are his own, _were_ his own, but now - well. He can’t go back. 

Hawke has made a gesture and now Anders must decide.

He wears the amulet over his chest; enjoys the warm, secret feeling of it, the weight against his skin. And he thinks about _what might be_ ; how the shape of his life and Hawke’s life might somehow fit together. They could fit, he thinks. For a little while, he thinks that. He lies exhausted on his cot, in the dark and the chill, and lets himself drift away: to a cottage, in a meadow, sun-soaked and lush; to a cat curled by the hearth - and a mabari besides, which might be curious if not for the man Anders imagines twined with him on the bed. Not lovemaking - though he has pictured that too, many times - but just… intimate. Close. Happy. Hawke’s arm curled about his waist, Hawke’s face pressed against his neck. Snoring, twitching, drooling. Anders pictures it all, every last detail in these dreams he has before sleeping, and he might be appalled at his own banality if he weren’t so far past caring.

Sometimes he pictures them in Rivain, on a white sandy beach, or in Antiva or Tevinter or somewhere that hasn’t a name; but sometimes, lately - quite often - he pictures them in Hawke’s Hightown mansion. He pictures Hawke’s fingers in Anders’s hair, working the tension from his neck. Low murmurs and soft looks and lying naked, skin to skin.

Anders drifts from his dreams to slumber: to nothingness, while Justice walks the Fade, keeping him safe, or to darkspawn, horrid things clawing, catching at his mind. He goes to sleep and wakes up and does it all again and he knows - has always known, he thinks - that he can never have anything more than dreams with Hawke. There is no way to make this real. Their paths are too different now, and Anders cannot say where his will take him, but he knows that he and Justice must walk it alone. 

Because Hawke deserves better than a make-believe man. Anders feels it so fiercely - the urge to protect this man, to do right by him - and the amulet hangs heavy around his neck. He knows what he must do. He cannot answer in kind.

It is a week or more before he finds something to fit his purpose. One of the newly arrived refugees is hocking all he can at Lirene’s; and amongst the trinkets and blunted daggers, Anders spots the very thing: a mabari, made of brass, set on a polished Fereldan oak mount. He can already picture the face Hawke will make - boyish grin and intent eyes - when Anders presents it to him.

He reaches across to the counter, past the brass mabari, and picks up a tattered manual on farming for smallholders instead. 

 

iv.

Anders hands the book over and watches Hawke’s face; he looks, perhaps, the same way Hawke looked all those weeks ago: eyes careful and hopeful and longing all at once. Still, perhaps he looks like that all the time. He’s not sure. He’s never been very good at hiding his feelings, after all.

But Hawke turns the book over and Anders watches his face; he watches his lips move, quite unconsciously, as he makes out the title, watches the crease between his brow, the bob of his throat as he swallows. Hawke opens the cover and runs a finger down the table of contents and Anders knows all the terrible titles there - _How To Sexe A Chicken, Dung Ho! A Compleat Guide to Manure and Its Uses_ \- and he wonders now whether Hawke might make a joke of one of them. Because there’s a reason he’s so quiet, so perhaps that’s it. He’s working out the punch line in his head before he speaks.

But after a moment, 'Thought you might find it nostalgic,’ Anders says, into the stretching silence. Hawke still hasn’t said anything and Anders finds he likes it less than he thought he would. Much less. There’s no victory, no rush of satisfaction that now Hawke _knows_ : knows how things stand and that there can never be anything more than this. Instead he feels sick; there’s a cold sort of dread creeping into his chest. It had all made so much sense in his head - to step back and draw a line and put a stop to this thing starting between them - but now, faced with Hawke, and Hawke’s silence, Anders is suddenly afraid. He wishes he could take it back.

This is the moment that Anders realises he wants Hawke. Not just for a tumble, not for a dream; not for the bubbly feeling in his chest, the meaningful glances or remembering how it feels to matter. No, Anders wants _Hawke_. He wants his work-calloused hands and his boyish grin and his kind eyes that are older than they ought to be too. He wants to protect Hawke from the world; and he wants, more than anything now, to reach out and hold him; to wrap his arms around the man’s waist and say it was all a joke. A horrible, badly thought out, meaningless joke.

But, 'You could say that,’ Hawke murmurs. He shuts the book now, raps his knuckles against the cheap fabric binding like he’s testing the weight of it. And when he looks back at Anders, there’s something queer in his face. Surprised and a bit thoughtful, like he’s testing the weight of Anders as well. There’s a softness there too, though. A softness - maybe even a brightness about his eyes… Oh, he’s _touched_ , Anders, thinks, and then, _Maker, he actually likes it!_ and Anders doesn’t have time to be dismayed his ploy has failed because the relief might actually knock him off his feet.

Hawke cocks his head, watching Anders; he’s probably reading all sorts of terrible, _telling_ things flitting across Anders’s traitorous face, and Anders doesn’t know how to stop him, but perhaps that’s alright. For Hawke’s expression is still thoughtful, but he’s grinning now too.

'It’s perfect,’ says Hawke. 'I’m going to read it cover to cover.’

Well, that’s that. It’s absolutely not what Anders was expecting, but then, that’s Hawke all over too. He wonders whether the man does it deliberately, baffling his friends and enemies alike, but dismisses it almost at once. He already knows the answer. And he knows too that he’s grinning back, like some love-struck apprentice, but that might not be too far from the truth. 

'Even the chapter about milking poisonous spiders?’ Anders says, and can’t keep the tease from his voice.

'Especially the chapter about milking poisonous spiders,’ Hawke says. He turns the book over in his hands once more; there’s still something strange mixed up in his face, but he’s smiling broadly - at Anders, at the book, and something besides that as well. Anders can’t quite put a finger on it, but… it’s almost as though he’s _marvelling_ at something. At what, though, well, Anders couldn’t say. He can’t make it out. But he thinks it doesn’t matter, really, because everything is alright; he hasn’t fucked it up before it could ever properly begin.

'My father would have loved this, you know,’ Hawke says, and there it is; Anders can almost see it: Hawke reaching for his story, drawing forth a memory to share. 'He had a whole collection of odd books, just like this one. He used to pick them up from all over, markets and places like that. There was one in particular - he used to read it to us whenever we couldn’t get to sleep - _Cockswatch’s Compendium of Rootes and Tubers_. We used to call it the Compo, for fairly obvious reasons.’

Anders raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t protest the title. Kinloch Hold’s library was full of ridiculous books too. 'Sounds like it might have had the opposite effect to me,’ he says, and can’t help laughing when Hawke flashes him a look.

'All about how to construct a potato cellar, sadly,’ the man says. 'And also very happily. But it put you out like a light in less than five minutes, no fear. Do you know, I’d almost forgotten that. Strange, isn’t it?’

Hawke goes quiet for a bit, thumbing through the pages of his terrible gift, the book that apparently forms part of a long and proud tradition. Whatever he’s remembering, he doesn’t share it - and Anders understands that. He too has memories - more than a few, in fact - that he’d be quite happy to let go, to let wither and fade away into nothing forever.

Then, 'He used to sit in the evenings and read. He’d read these things cover to cover, hunched over with a candle,’ Hawke says, nodding to the book. 'I never realised… Well.’

'Never realised what?’ Anders says.

'What it meant for him, I suppose,’ Hawke says. He’s still thoughtful. Anders wants to reach up and rub at the crease in the man’s brow. 'We were always trying to fit in with the locals, wherever we went. That was just second nature. But I didn’t realise until I got here, saw the wretched Gallows, all that - well, how desperately he must have been trying to fill in all the gaps. We used to laugh about his book collection, and he’d always laugh with us, but underneath. Well, you know.’

Anders knows. He can feel Justice prickling beneath the surface, his own anger and Justice’s melting together into something hot and raw and powerful - but this isn’t the time for that, he thinks. He makes a conscious effort to let the feeling go; it’s his own emotion calling to Justice, stirring him, sparking his protection; and he knows this is not fair when he has no need of it now.

Hawke looks up and meets his eye and Anders is very glad, suddenly, about the book and the failed plan and the whole sodding mess of it because this… this matters. Hawke matters. Hawke and his family and thousands upon thousands of mages like him: that’s who Anders and Justice are fighting for. 

Anders reaches out and takes Hawke’s hand, squeezes it; he sees Hawke’s boyish grin make him young again, feels him squeeze back, firm and quick.

Anders did not know Hawke’s father and he cannot add to the tale, but, 'He grew up in the Circle, didn’t he?’ Hawke nods. He’s still holding Anders’s hand. 'Poring over books - it becomes a habit, it’s a necessity. Any questions, you get directed to some dusty tome,’ Anders says, then, 'I’m glad your father found a way to use that, to turn it into something else.’

Hawke nods again. 'Well, he was always very good at turning things around,’ he says; there’s a hidden joke in there somewhere, Anders can hear it in Hawke’s voice - and one day, he thinks, he’ll know what it is. That joke. Other jokes, other secret things. He wants to know: he wants to hear Hawke’s dreams and share his own, and together, he thinks, they might get somewhere real. Not in Antiva or Rivain or some half-remembered childhood meadow; no, they are here, now, making memories all their own.

He leans forward, as if drawn in by some arcane pull, and Hawke meets him halfway; their lips meet, and Anders closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to watch Hawke’s face; the memory is already burned bright.

* * *

_end._


End file.
